Coffee With God

Reflection: Luke 16:9-15

Today’s passage is a continuation of what we have reflected on yesterday where Jesus was praising the choice of the unfaithful steward to give up his dirty wealth and profits to gain friends. The friends to whom Jesus was referring to in the parable were obviously the poor. They had owed debts to the master. And the poor have a special place in the Gospel according to Luke. The poor are friends of God. On various occasions, Luke had indicated his distrust of wealth. He was convinced that Jesus considered wealth as an impediment to one’s journey in faith and therefore, he referred to wealth and riches as tainted. The evangelist pays great attention to present the concern of Jesus for the poor, the abandoned and the deprived of the society. Jesus ascertains the responsibility of the rich and wealthy to care for the needy of the society. The destiny of those with riches would be determined by how they care for the poor. Financial generosity to the poor can proceed from a variety of dishonest motives, and be expressed in a variety of different non-faithful ways. People have been generous in reaching out to the needy especially in these times of the pandemic, but often times, these acts of generosity were put on public display through social media platforms. We live in an honour-based culture and generosity for public display is not the genuine response required of disciples. Self-interest and self-importance are not giving glory to God, but only glorify oneself. The Hebrew tradition believed that the land of Israel belonged to God and was given equally to all Israelites for their use. Although no practical ways were ever found to translate successfully into practice this sense of God’s ownership and of the people’s sharing in it, the general feeling remained, however, that wealth was to be shared. When solidarity with others was ignored or refused, people refused to share the plan of God. There is a difference between serving and “using”. Jesus ruled out serving wealth. The difficulty remains that wealth has the tendency to become addictive. Jesus wanted his disciples to find freedom from addiction to wealth. The pharisees preferred to ridicule Jesus because they were convinced that it was wealth and not poverty that brought honour. They pretended to be generous towards the poor in order to gain honour and applauds in the society. Their acts of almsgiving was a significant factor in their own self-esteem. Jesus condemned such hypocrisy and the challenge is on us today. How genuine and faithful are we with our riches and wealth?